what may have brought this moment of self deprecation forward you may ask? well i spent some time in the glorious early new england autumn sunshine. i was walking with my dog on a running track. he was going all free-willy all over the place. the squirrels out there may have thought they hadn't a chance with him, but they are completely safe with him. he never catches any of them. as a matter of fact, i think it is just some internally hardwired game he has to play. when confronted with an actual stationary grey beastie, he is totally non-plussed. he has nothing to say or do.
i was walking and my dog was leaping and bounding. he was having as nice a time in his own world as i was. we were both enjoying some light hearted yet essential exercise. knowing me even slightly, will suggest this is an event of ginormous proportion and simultaneous with harmonic planetary alignment. i tend to dislike exercise; it's the sweatiness that resultingly happens. i love how i feel after it is done, but then again, that's where that self righteous thing rears its nasty little head.
as i was moving along the oval i saw some oak trees in the mix. i am a relentless re-purposer and try to smother my crankiness by thinking of others. my friend janice makes awe-inspiring things from felted wool and other fibers in unlikely combinations along with vintage silk saris. now that seems easy enough, but first you need to have all kinds of mad textile skills and then you need to be married to an indian fella with a pipeline to old silks ... it is not as easy as it sounds.
one of janice's side sets of products for sale, is a quick and easy little construction made with felted wool and acorn caps. in my mind, i have been waiting for the perfect time to pluck gabillions of acorn caps from the ground in wooded areas nearby to gift her with. it will allow her to move her festive acorn making factory into overdrive. today seemed a good chance to do some harvesting. i spent a relatively short but fruitful period with my tush in the air, picking up the adorable mini-wooden berets for her assemblages.
between the joy of running around off-leash and during the season where squirrels take more food hoarding chances with their safety, the dog to got a little jiggy with things. he was so happy, he pooped for the third time. i had run out of clean-up bags, since one had just been allocated to being filled with fresh materials for felted acorns. i left the bag of my collection on the side of the track to pinpoint the mess and walked back to my car to get some more bags for its removal.
in the few moments that this took and the time i took to walk back to where my spot was marked, my plan was dismantled. a man with a chocolate lab in a big harness was taking my bag and his dog over to the trash barrel.
head slap.
he was dumping my former place marker and acorn cache into the oil drum trash can. i asked to be sure and he replied that someone left a bag of "shells"and he was cleaning it up. seriously, i did not lose it... but i mentioned that i had in fact been collecting the acorn tops and had left the bag to mark my dog's mess. he said "oh" and as i went to reclaim the bag, he told me his dog had peed all over it anyways.
i let it go, went back to look for the mess in the dried leaves and pine needles. luckily it was easy to find and so was the pile of "shells" the guy had poured out of the pee bag onto the ground nearby.
since i had fresh bags to recapture the acorns with, i did so. we had a little discussion about what i was doing and why. he offered that there were a lot more caps available "at the front". my head works overtime often enough. i was trying to decide if i wanted to ask, but thought better and figured it was easier to look for other oak trees. since the park and track were oval, there was no clear 'front' to the space. just a couple of more open areas that were along side of it all. hard to say what was a 'front' or a proper entrance. so i just kept my mouth shut.
then the fellow offered the info that there were lots more that were double caps still attached and they were really unique.
here is where my inner language bitch said "MEEEEEOOOOOW!!!"
how can lots of the same thing be unique? especially when it is at the front on an oval?
it is hard being so sarcastic by nature. and by nurture too. the same woman that carefully tended that growth in me also was the one to tell me she could not abide by my self righteousness. again, head slapping myself here. if not for her and her own stinking forms of cray-cray, i suspect that i wouldn't be imbued with sarcasm, sardonic insight, irony or self righteousness. she made me this way to survive her beastliness and ineptitude in parenting. very limited nurturing occurred. as my my friend janice says, in deference to her own childhood, "she was raised by wolves". often enough, i think i was too. it was another pack though. they had a guilt gene inserted into their dna.
so my sweet puppy and i enjoyed the weather, the collecting, the ability to curtail snarly comments and were just about to pop into our car to return to home base. an enormously lovely young mother from a tropical island somewhere stopped me to speak. her accent had a lilting accent with british overtones that identified her island origin and open countenance. she had her 18 month old son, a gorgeous confection with her. she asked if my dog was friendly and if her son could pat him. of course they could. i adore trying to get more people and dogs to enjoy each other. it makes my grinch heart swell a little every time.
so the three of us were communing with the dog. another woman pulled up and my dog sashayed the six feet over to greet her. she freaked out and asked if he was going to bite her. seriously, did the small 18 month old boy look in peril of any kind? did the dog rush her? he mosied to be sure. that was all. no growling or barking either. at worst, i figure he would make his presence known by shedding near her.. but that is pretty much it.
i need regular reminders. it is not me.... it is that it is cranston. cranston, rhode island. and cranston has its own zip code, but needs its own area code as well as country code. there is something that makes people there dumber more often than they need to be. not all people... just more than one might feel is normal.
so this is what makes me a bitch. rolling all the language and attitudes around in my head. i did not say anything; my aging is allowing me to keep things to myself more. an ability to control my mouth more carefully is helpful in getting by in this world. that and making fresh flowery goodies.
on that note.... here are a few new things or elements in progress.
earrings. earrings. earrings. i made 29 prs. last night. only need their rhinestones to glam them up and some earwires to make them dangle.
earrings. earrings. earrings.
in progresso
tonight i am gonna get some posts made. they are overdue. here is a photo of an older pair i made and me when i was a year younger. the contrast amuses me.
old lady ears... pay no attention to the grey hair, wrinkles and age spots around those lobes.
it is the scale, color and floral form of the post earrings that are noteworthy.
and then there are some new necklaces that i made with silver chains
instead of my more usual vintage lucite beaded ones.
a new pair of GRACELETS...
since way back when my son was small and charming,
he would call bracelets 'gracelets' instead.
fresh chain bracelets came into being as well.
they are punctuated with earrings (again in their then, unwired state)
my daily rant is now concluded. i know there are loads of things to do other than take a field trip into my world, but thanks for looking in.
xo.xo.xo.
w.
